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10.21.2013

The Best Advice Ever

I was thinking today about what the best advice I ever received from a friend was. It actually makes me laugh because it is so simple. It came at a time in my life when I really did need it and it actually made me really mad when she told me, "Bloom where you are planted."

I was very young, it was just a few months after my first baby and I was not happy. I was sharing with her how terrible it was to be married, with a kid (my choices) and stuck in my hometown (not my choice) while all my high school classmates went off to their exciting colleges and career choices, and how I didn't have friends my own age (it was really more of a rant probably). Oh how it must have felt for her to hear it (lol). She just smiled and told me the words that would crack my world and turn it upside down.

I thought to myself, "She was my best friend, she was supposed to listen to me and understand!" Why in the world would she tell me, "Bloom where I am planted?" It was one of those questions that stuck in my brain and caused things to churn up which is just what I needed. It loosened up some stinking thinking that needed to be dealt with. The more I pondered her words, the more they began to penetrate to my spirit, which helped me to begin to see things differently.

My life wasn't so bad, in fact, I wasn't really unhappy. The truth was that things weren't turning out quite like I had imagined in my little girl dreams but that didn't make it bad. The truth was that I needed to look at everything differently. I needed to take off my negative glasses and put on the positive ones. You see we don't have to remain pessimistic. We can actually decide that the glass is half full. The decision to see things like that changed my life.

The truth in my life was that I was young, healthy, married to a man I loved and who loved me; I had a beautiful healthy and wonderful baby girl; we had pretty great jobs; and I was close enough to my parents to have my mom be my awesome babysitter (who else better to help me?). No, I didn't get to go off and have the college life with my friends, but I did have a pretty great life, so what was I complaining about? As I began to think about things this way it caused my thinking to change even more.

Instead of hating my hometown and wanting to escape it, I began to look around and see ways that I could improve it and make a difference. It is funny how that caused me to begin to love my community rather than hate it. That love for my community opened me up to make new friends and not limit friendship to an age. I guess what I am describing is a growth process that took place. It started deep in the dark place where the seed landed. It was watered when I began to process it in my heart and mind. It grew when I changed my attitude and it bloomed when I changed my actions.

To my dear friend Shelley: "If you are out there reading this? I say thank you!" To all of the rest of you if you are in a place or circumstances or surrounded by people that you are unhappy with, maybe those same words of advice can help you like they did me. "Bloom where you are planted!"